Bharatiya Janata Party MPs from Telangana are shaken up. The tongue-lashing they got from Prime Minister Narendra Modi over breakfast last Thursday was brutal. “How much more will you ruin the BJP in Telangana?” the PM snapped at them at least four times, according to those present there. “You are not even playing the role of the Opposition,” he said.
When these Members of Parliament were invited to breakfast, along with their colleagues from Andhra Pradesh, humble pie wasn’t something they were expecting to eat. They had never seen the Prime Minister so upset and bitter. As it was, the Parliament session wasn’t going the way he would have liked. A few days back, the Opposition had one of those rare victories when they forced the government to beat a hasty retreat on the Sanchar Saathi app. The debate on Vande Mataram didn’t go well either. It had started with a gaffe by PM Modi himself when he referred to Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay as “Bankim da”. He corrected himself on this, only to remove ‘da’ while referring to “Master da” Surya Sen, a freedom fighter revered in Bengal. He referred to another freedom fighter, Pulin Behari Das, as Pulin Vikas Ghosh. Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee pounced on these bloopers to accuse him of belittling Bengal’s cultural and nationalist icons.
The BJP was seeking to corner the Congress by trying to blame Jawaharlal Nehru for removing stanzas from Vande Mataram composed by Bankim Chattopadhyay. It, however, ended up turning the focus on the roles of Rabindranath Tagore and Subhas Chandra Bose in this removal. Being seen as pitting Bankim Babu against Gurudev is something no party can afford in Bengal. Trust Mamata Banerjee to keep harping on this subject to project the BJP as the ‘outsider’. “Better slip with foot than tongue,” advised Benjamin Franklin, whose autobiography PM Modi recommended to MPs at a dinner he hosted Thursday evening.
“Main stress leta nahin, deta hoon (I give, not take, stress),” the PM told MPs over dinner. Well, Telangana MPs experienced it on Thursday morning itself. They also knew that it probably wasn’t the Sanchar Saathi embarrassment or the ‘Bankim da’ blooper that upset PM Modi that morning. One of his remarks gave a clear idea of what was weighing on his mind. “In 1984, we won two seats. Where are we in Gujarat and where in Telangana?” he said.
Founded in 1980, the BJP won two seats in the first Lok Sabha election it contested in 1984—Mehsana in Gujarat and Hanamkonda in Andhra Pradesh (in Telangana today). In the 11 Lok Sabha elections in Mehsana since then, the BJP has won nine times, with the Congress winning just twice—in 1999 and 2004. In the 12 Lok Sabha elections in Hanamkonda (which ceased to be a constituency in 2008, with most parts merged into the Warangal constituency), the BJP hasn’t won even once. By the way, the BJP’s Chendupatla Janga Reddy had won Hanamkonda in 1984 by defeating PV Narasimha Rao. The 1985 Assembly election was the last time the Congress won in Gujarat. In Telangana, the BJP squandered its formidable gains by virtually handing over the baton to the Congress in the last Assembly election.
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What was the trigger?
The recent Assembly bypoll in Hyderabad’s Jubilee Hills could also have prompted PM Modi to think about the 1984 results and the state of the BJP in Gujarat and Telangana. The BJP couldn’t even secure even nine per cent votes in Jubilee Hills. While the Congress snatched the seat from the Bharat Rashtra Samithi, the BJP’s vote share went down by five percentage points compared to the last Assembly poll. Telangana MPs should thank their lucky stars that their breakfast meeting with the Prime Minister happened before the results of the first phase of the gram panchayat elections were out. Of 3,834 Sarpanch seats that went to the polls, the BJP-backed candidates won only 160.
What must be hurting PM Modi more is that he enjoys great popularity in Telangana, but his party has failed to capitalise on it in the Assembly election. It’s evident from the fact that while the BJP has done increasingly better in parliamentary elections, its performance in the Assembly elections has been dismal.
Look at the Lok Sabha results in Telangana. The BJP won one seat out of 17 in 2014, four in 2019 and eight in 2024. Its voteshares in these three parliamentary elections were 10 per cent, 20 per cent and 35 per cent respectively.
Look at the last two Assembly elections. The BJP won eight seats out of 119 with around 14 per cent of the votes in 2023, against one seat and 7 per cent of the votes in 2018. People evidently vote differently for the PM and the CM. The party’s growth in Telangana is Modi-centric, not organic.
In direct contests for power with the Congress, the BJP has had a phenomenal record since the ‘Modi wave’ swept the country in 2014. It has also been equally successful in trumping the Congress, while fighting with a third force. PM Modi cited the example of Odisha to Telangana MPs on Thursday. The BJP first dislodged the Congress from the principal Opposition’s turf and then went on to vanquish the Biju Janata Dal. It successfully followed the same strategy in Tripura and is now seeking to replicate it in West Bengal, where the Left-Congress formed the joint Opposition. The same strategy isn’t working in Telangana, though. Chief Minister Revanth Reddy has turned out to be a very street-smart politician. He can justify accepting funds from Gautam Adani “for the development of Telangana”, even as Rahul Gandhi keeps targeting the billionaire businessman. Telangana CM can rename a road in Hyderabad “Donald Trump Avenue”, no matter what Gandhi thinks about the US President. Trump Media has now pledged an investment of Rs 1 lakh crore in the state over the next 10 years. Reddy has emerged as a long-term asset for the Congress, while BJP leaders wring their hands in despair.
PM Modi’s frustration over Telangana affairs is understandable, but he is barking up the wrong tree. It’s the BJP high command that should take responsibility for failures. Bandi Sanjay Kumar, whose three-year tenure as the state BJP president led to a big surge in the party’s visibility and popularity, was dropped barely five months before the last Assembly elections. He was replaced by G Kishan Reddy. The move gave the impression of a stopgap arrangement as Reddy was retained as a minister at the Centre. Besides, Reddy’s previous tenure as state BJP president—from 2014 to 2016—was eminently forgettable. With one step, the BJP lost the momentum in Telangana in 2023. Why Modi-Shah are so fond of Reddy has remained a mystery to his party colleagues. He led his party to an embarrassing defeat in the Assembly election but has retained his Union Cabinet berth. In July, the party replaced him with Ramchander Rao as the Telangana unit president. Rao is an advocate who was earlier a member of the Legislative Council. Party insiders attribute these changes to the need to bring someone who can work with different factions within the party. That was the reason cited for dropping Bandi Sanjay, too.
As it is, only PM Modi looks bothered about Telangana affairs. BJP’s General Secretary (organisation), BL Santhosh, is said to be doing in Telangana what he did in Karnataka—promoting his loyalists over performers. National General Secretary in charge of Telangana, Sunil Bansal, has no time for the state. Because he is also in charge of West Bengal, Odisha and Yuva Morcha. PM Modi has only MPs to share his angst with.
DK Singh is Political Editor at ThePrint. He tweets @dksingh73. Views are personal.
(Edited by Theres Sudeep)